Audition (2)
Audition (2)
My wallet went into the safe, and I did not take a single step outside my room.
And the next day.
Dad woke me up to come eat.
"Not eating."
"...You think if you do that I'll give it back?"
"Forget it. I'm staying shut in a room with no freedom. Get out."
"....."
Twelve hours since my wallet entered the safe...
I came out to the living room to get water.
But Dad was sitting on the living room sofa, looking conspicuously forlorn.
The table was covered with food and side dishes...
The moment our eyes met, I made a little "hmph" and went back to my room with my cup of water.
"...Si-yoon..."
At Dad's call, I shut the door with a thud, drank my water, and got under the covers.
Dad's acting had improved lately, and if I fell for that performance and gave in first, I'd be stuck waiting out all sixty-seven days.
About two more hours passed... I was starving.
Before going out, I cracked the door open to see what Dad was doing. He was just sitting on the sofa, head hung low, doing nothing at all.
I thought maybe he was asleep, but then he rubbed his face and sighed.
When I went back out to the living room to pour myself a drink, the food was still sitting on the table, untouched.
'Ah...'
This wasn't an act.
In the end, I raised the white flag and sat down next to him.
"...Thirty days only."
"...Okay."
"Dad, I'm sorry... let's eat."
Dad's eyes went red-rimmed. He held me tight for a long while, then got up and started reheating the soup.
To cheer him up that day, we shopped and went out all day long, and came home late.
Just that little bit of a power struggle, and I ended up getting put through the wringer by Dad for two days.
'Should've just let him take the sixty-seven days...'
And so, during the break, I invested every moment Dad was out of the house into cracking the safe.
Time passed, and second semester started, but at school, Joo Do-hyeon was nowhere to be seen.
He said he was going abroad to study, but it looked like he needed a good pretext to get away from Park Ji-hoon.
Right around when I was getting used to school again, the weekend arrived, and I got to the audition venue with Dad.
People wearing Notflix badges.
At the request to come in Gumiho makeup, for the first time in a while I put on a white wig with pink accents here and there and had professional makeup done.
They drew my eyeliner in pink, painted pink patterns across my face, and put on heavily furred ears.
The makeup artist kept marveling.
"Wow... this is the prettiest I've ever seen in my life... I've done makeup for so many celebrities, but this is seriously too pretty..."
"Thank you~"
When I smiled and greeted her, the artist froze and stiffened up.
"...I almost got bewitched."
"Hahaha."
"I mean it!"
I laughed through the rest of the makeup, then walked smoothly into the audition hall.
The moment I stepped inside, the hall went silent.
No one even breathed. They all just stared at me.
When I scratched my cheek, only then did I hear breath being drawn.
""Whoaah....""
But it was a breath mixed with admiration and lament.
To be fair, even Dad, who was used to me, had been shocked when he saw me in full makeup.
I was flaunting a look so surreal you'd think it couldn't really exist.
I looked like I had my own CGI, even though this wasn't a broadcast.
Since my lead role was already locked in, the audition was over once I briefly showed my acting.
The script they handed me.
First, the rough setup from season 1 of "My Love Was a Gumiho," which I'd filmed long ago:
The moment a spirit came to possess two or more tails, a strict hierarchy came into being.
A yeong that became a "Gumiho" through disciplined cultivation could become human if it trained its yeowoo-guseul for ten years, eating only mugwort and garlic, or consuming the raw livers of animals.
And out of a total of four hundred twenty "Miho," one of the only two "Gumiho" that ever existed transforms into a human.
The sole remaining descendant of Dalgi, who was once the favored consort of King Ju and said to have split heaven and earth, a legendary figure even among the ancient Gumiho.
My role is Joo Ha-rin: a figure constantly gossiped about among the yokai, whose beauty and talent have been frighteningly greater than even the legendary Dalgi's since she was merely a "Three-Tail."
And Joo Ha-rin is the cherished favorite of the last remaining "Gumiho" in the Republic of Korea.
She descended to the human world for ten years simply because she was bored, seeking entertainment—that's the setup for Joo Ha-rin.
I read through the script and threw myself into the performance.
[All the yeong fear her and slowly distance themselves from Joo Ha-rin.]
[Joo Ha-rin approaches a male possessed by a high-grade vengeful spirit. She smiles with a seductive gaze, licks her lips, lays a hand on the man's chest, and says, "You look delicious."]
"You... look delicious..."
It was a natural performance, but whether it was because of my looks, the other actor couldn't focus and missed his next line.
He looked like he'd been entranced by me, not Joo Ha-rin. His expression was practically saying "Yes... please enjoy your meal."
My line wasn't meant as anything risqué, of course...
It literally meant she intended to devour the vengeful spirit that was his character.
Joo Ha-rin is a "Five-Tail" who has lived seven hundred years—a being feared by all yeong, even by dokkaebi and grim reapers who have lived for millennia. This yeong isn't supposed to react like that.
He's supposed to recoil in terror and tremble like the script says.
The situation was absurd, but I refocused and kept the scene going.
The setup is that Joo Ha-rin takes the form of a high school student to enjoy her games.
The male lead, by the way, is a twenty-five-year-old actor, originally an idol under JSM,
and here's the ridiculous part: he was genuinely afraid of me even without me saying a word.
Well, Dad is JSM's marquee name Kim Ji-ho, and the CEO thinks of me as a daughter, and on top of that, as long as his career is with JSM, it makes sense he'd be too wary to even speak to me.
Anyway, his role is an ordinary male student with the unique constitution to see yeong invisible to normal people, and he has a one-sided crush on me, thinking I'm human.
To introduce a few more characters, there's also the actor Yoo Su-a, who plays a man who is both my butler and cover older brother.
Why don't I ever play villains?
That role is just as reckless and vicious as mine.
It seems I was cast because the character is more ruthless and vicious than several of the actual villains who appear.
And then there's the real villain who shows up.
Actor Kim Ha-neul, playing a malevolent spirit classified as top-grade.
An actor I was seeing for the first time in forever, since Zombie.
Kim Ha-neul had been doing overseas schedules lately, ever since the Zombie film.
"Si-yoon!!!"
"Oh! It's been forever~"
"Whoa, you've grown so fast?! Why didn't you call!"
And another middle-aged actor greeting me.
Actor Song Il-seong, who, like Yoo Su-a, plays my butler and cover father.
"Oh?! Sir!"
When I ran over for a hug after so long, actor Song Il-seong lifted me right up into the air.
Even though he'd gotten older, his imposing build was unchanged.
Even when I perched on his arm like the old days, the rock-steady comfort hadn't changed.
"You've gotten crazy heavy, huh?"
"Of course~ it's been years~"
I did feel a bit wistful that Han Seok-hyeon, who'd played Kim Ji-seong, wasn't there.
Actor Kim Ha-neul looked at me and smiled as he spoke.
"Hui-seon and Seok-hyeon said they want to get a meal together."
"Really? I'm so in~"
Hui-seon was so busy with her schedule that she said she would be auditioning separately.
I looked down at actor Kim Ha-neul from atop actor Song Il-seong's arm.
"I see him a lot these days, and he talks about Si-yoon all the time~"
"Why haven't you called me out all this time, then?"
"Well, Si-yoon was so young back then, and these days it's hard to find a time that works~"
"Ah~"
At this reunion after so long, we chattered boisterously.
My jaw dropped when I toured the studio being built for filming with the actors.
"Whoa... this is even more insane than a movie set?"
They did say this production was receiving the biggest investment among this year's Notflix dramas, and the class really showed.
I saw a lot of new faces around, but you could also spot quite a few people with real name recognition.
When the drama wrapped, I'd be in the latter half of eighteen years old, and by the time I went back on Next-Door Hyungnim, I'd have a ton more stories to tell, which made me look forward to it even more.
"Si-yoon~ how was the audition today?"
Da-yeon asked me carefully; maybe it was because I'd told her it was top secret.
"It was fun~ But... I don't think Da-yeon will be able to come to set this time."
"That's okay~ film it and show me later!"
"Yeah."
Da-yeon could probably come by and look around the studio, but outside visitors were strictly forbidden during filming.
Maybe it was because Notflix had invested so much, but the regulations were definitely extremely complicated.
I showed Da-yeon the photos of me in the Gumiho makeup.
Full outfit, including a full set of hanbok.
"Whoa..."
Da-yeon's eyes had been glittering as she looked at my photos, and then she spun around to face me.
"That's insane..."
"Super pretty, right?"
Right then, from behind, Park Ji-hoon tapped me on the head a couple of times.
"Me too, me too, me too, me too."
I wanted to turn around and give him a knuckle sandwich right there,
but these days, Park Ji-hoon reacted the same no matter how much you hit him, so I just gave up and handed over my phone.
"The fuck? Who's this?"
He and Kim Tae-oh looked at my phone together.
""Whoa...""
It was an overwhelming enough look to make those two go "whoa."
I felt it myself, after all...
Especially the me inside the camera: I was exuding a beauty so extreme it made you wonder if that was even a real living creature.
"You can see the rest when they come out."
Class started then, and we each went back to our seats and focused on the lesson.
Before long, it was lunchtime.
A lot of eyes converged on us as we stood in line.
Usually, meals were staggered by grade, so as first-years, we got ours at the very last time slot.
Back in elementary school, there'd been kids confessing with reckless abandon. In middle school, it was a bunch of clingy kids...
In high school, public confessions had gotten a whole lot more common.
Once as I was leaving school, a group of male students had their fairly pricey motorcycles lined up, practically blocking the entrance.
It was obvious they were waiting for me, so I ignored them and quickly got in Da-yeon's car and left.
After a few repeats of that, they seemed to give up...
A second-year male student confessed to me by handing over a diamond ring with ornate decoration...
A ring so excessively designed it wouldn't have been strange to get it confiscated on the spot.
Naturally, I refused, and the reply I got back was one for the books.
'Take it. Just knowing you have it is enough for me.' A statement like that...
Completely dumbfounded, I just said, "Sorry," set it down on the ground, and walked away.
And then another time, I was waiting with Ji-yeong, and the guy who'd given me the diamond turned up with a bouquet.
"You're telling me to hold that while I eat? I don't care about the confession, but isn't this just being a massive nuisance?"
"Ah..."
I guess he realized he'd screwed up as my reaction turned frostier.
If it happened once or twice, fine, but he was perfectly normal-looking and kept bringing every bizarre gift imaginable.
According to Ji-yeong, he was the eldest son of the owner of a mid-sized company.
And the bigger problem... was that he wasn't the only guy doing this.
These little shits acted like they'd made it their mission to embarrass me, confessing whenever they caught me somewhere crowded.
And every time, Kim Tae-oh and Park Ji-hoon obviously scoffed at them.
"Ugh... this is so stressful..."
"Si-yoon..."
Ji-yeong said with a laugh.
"Still as popular as ever. These days, does your shoe locker still get full?"
"That's still the same too... haah..."
Still, Da-yeon and Kim Tae-oh had their shoe lockers stuffed as well, which was at least some consolation.
More than anything, that bastard Kim Tae-oh even had his own separate fan club.
And once we became high schoolers, what was truly, truly unexpected: even Park Ji-hoon somehow picked up a small fan club.
The four of us were that ridiculously popular, so all eyes naturally converged on us.
Almost like a co-ed version of "Boys Over Flowers"—no, more like "Boys and Girls Over Flowers"...
I do want to go to university, too, but just imagining the confessions getting even more creative makes my head spin.
Thankfully, the truly high-grade lunatics were kept at bay by the bodyguards attached to me...
It was a colorful array, from flashers to actual terrorists.
Still, if there was one thing to be thankful for, ever since Joo Do-hyeon, there'd been no little punks puffing their chests in front of us.
Stories about Park Ji-hoon's amateur matches were famous.
And rumors had spread that Kim Tae-oh and Park Ji-hoon had actually killed someone.
Only the four of us knew that it wasn't just a rumor, but the truth.
The moment I picked up a sausage with my chopsticks, Park Ji-hoon shoved all his own sausages into his mouth and then stared intently at mine.
"Just stuff your own face, you fucking pig."
"What're you on about? I was gonna go back for more. You're just imagining things, all by yourself."
"....."
I was in the middle of chewing my food. When I put my spoon in my mouth, Park Ji-hoon recoiled in horror, grabbed his tray, and fled.
I'd tried to deal with the vulgar bastard on his own level, but Park Ji-hoon just drew a line and vanished.
What I'd been about to do—only Park Ji-hoon and Kim Tae-oh knew.
"Si-yoon, they say this toothpaste is super good for whitening."
"Really?"
Ji-yeong nodded from beside us and looked over at Da-yeon's toothpaste.
"Oh, that one's insanely famous overseas."
Da-yeon squeezed some toothpaste out for Ji-yeong.
I was going "Blech! Gack!! Ugh!!!" while trying to scrub my tongue when Da-yeon spoke up.
"Si-yoon... aren't you overdoing it a bit?"
The two of them had long since gotten used to it, but I was scrubbing till my eyes went red, and Da-yeon had to stop me.
"Ugh... it only feels clean if I do it this hard."
"No it doesn't... that's just pain..."
"Damn, at that rate, you'll bring up stomach acid."
I showed Da-yeon my tongue, now bright red with the white coating gone.
"Ta-da, clean, right?"
Da-yeon stuck her own tongue out, showing hers was clean too.
"You only have to do it this much, you know?"
"Hm... you're right..."
We finished brushing and were filling our thermoses with warm water.
"I wish I could be in the same class as Si-yoon~"
"Probably next year."
"Haah~, please let it happen... Ah, I'm gonna be late, I'm going ahead~"
"Yeah, see you~"
When we walked back into our classroom, we were met with a silent room.
These people had resolved to study hard with the college entrance exam coming up, dedicating themselves in quiet isolation, but...
The moment I stepped in through the back door, every student's gaze snapped to me.
Apparently, instinct came first, even before the resolution to study.